


too young, too dumb (to know things like love)

by angorwat



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Calum Hood-centric, Cheating, Cheating Ashton, Future-fic, Infidelity, M/M, Niall and Harry are an established side thing, Relationship Issues, This is not about them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23897518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angorwat/pseuds/angorwat
Summary: Calum and Ashton are perfect even as they're falling apart.
Relationships: Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Crystal Leigh, Niall Horan/Harry Styles, Sierra Deaton/Luke Hemmings
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	too young, too dumb (to know things like love)

Calum doesn’t know exactly where this begins. Doesn’t know what the triggering event is. All he knows is this: That they were about to release their sixth album. He and Ashton had just celebrated ten years of being together with a vacation in Hawaii, and that it had been the best week of his life. Hawaii always was kind to them, and they had returned home happy and tanned and sated.

Ashton had been late to a recording session one day. Hadn’t looked at Calum for the rest of the day. Was coming home late after that, would say everything was alright whenever Calum asked.

Comes home one day with lipstick marks on his shirt, and kisses Calum hello like everything was alright.

Like he hadn’t decided to burn their house down.

* * *

But, maybe, if it begins anywhere it begins here, with Calum fifteen years old, sitting in the passenger seat of Ashton’s car, after cutting math class. Ashton had scolded him over the phone, but he had still shown up to pick him up and Calum thought, _this has to count for something._

It’s Calum, _younger_ than he will ever be again, and perhaps braver too, who reaches across the gear shift, shyly takes Ashton’s hand. Doesn’t look to see how the older boy reacts. Ashton smiles softly, holds his hand back, continues driving like nothings happened, looking at Calum’s smile out of the corner of his eye. Drives his car out of the city limits, feels like at that moment he can do anything because the most beautiful boy he had ever known had held his hand. Thinks he will do anything for him to keep holding it.

It’s not until a decade later that he realises he would.

* * *

It took Luke calling his name eight times for Calum to realise he was being spoken to. He looks up, blinking, from where he had been staring at the carpet.

“Calum” Luke calls again, and it takes Calum a second to focus on him.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. How long have I just been sitting there?” he asked.

“Almost an hour Cal.”

Time had been bleeding away from Calum recently. He would be thinking about everything (about nothing), his mind ticking away to an unknown hour as time slipped by without his notice. He zones out. Loses the hours between interviews, between soundcheck and shows, between leaving and coming back home. 

“Sorry Lukey, just got caught up,” he said, his gesturing as if to convey _in everything_ and _in nothing_ and _I don’t know I’ve just been so tired recently._ “Where’s Ashton?”

“He left about forty minutes ago, him and some of the crew celebrating before tour starts. You sure you’re okay Cal?” Luke looked concerned now, everyone looked concerned for him these days. Well. _Almost._

“Just a little high-strung these days, you know how I get before tour.” He stands up, stretching, his shirt riding up. “Where’s Mikey?”

“Right here.” Michael said, as he entered the recording studio they had spent the better part of the last six months in. He looked at Calum for a second, like he wanted to say something, but then shook his head, as if thinking better of it. “Wanna get dinner boys?”

Calum almost said that he had dinner plans with Ashton before he realised the older boy had taken off for the night. He's been eating dinner alone too often lately.

“Let’s go.” He said.

Dinner was quiet, the three getting burgers at a hole-in-the-wall place Michael had discovered a few years ago, where somehow even in the throbbing heart of Los Angeles, nobody seemed to care who they were. It was refreshing.

“How’s wedding planning going Mike?” Luke asks, after it became clear that Calum wasn’t going to initiate conversation.

The wedding talk continued throughout dinner; Michael clearly excited to get married. There were less than six months left for the wedding, and despite everything, Calum felt warmth spreading through him as they talk, something like excitement stirring in his gut as he thought about standing next to Michael as his best friend got married.

A warmth that disappeared quickly when he reached home and all the lights were out. He trudged through his nightly routine, took a shower and then crawled into his, _their_ , cold bed, wearing one of Ashton’s t-shirts that was too big for him at the shoulder, falling asleep almost before his eyes shut.

He was woken up in the middle of the night, as he often was these days, with Ashton crawling into bed with him, smelling of perfume that Calum had never worn, and alcohol and cigarettes which he had sworn he would never touch again, his hands turning Calum over, whispering _I missed you so much tonight baby,_ and, _we never go out together anymore._

Calum shut his eyes, trying not to cry as Ashton finished and passed out next to him, trying to pretend that he didn’t see the hickeys peeking over Ashton’s collar, trying to pretend everything around him isn’t falling apart.

* * *

Tour is like it always is. By the second week, Calum is perpetually dehydrated, his hands shaking from it and the stress. He closes his eyes, pretends he doesn’t see Ashton going around with the stagehand, the singer from the band opening for them, the manager at the arena they’re performing at. Still hold his hand in public and smiles when the interviewer asks them how they’re doing and Ashton answers ‘never better’ and calls him the love of his life. He’s tired in a way he can’t fix by sleeping, and he knows people have noticed, but it's early enough in the tour that he can pass it off as fatigue.

He knows everyone on tour, the crew, the band all of them notice how he and Ashton have started developing cracks, how it’s Michael who drags Calum to the bus most days, how Ashton has started calling him baby while making eyes at someone else but he doesn’t know how to fix that yet, so he closes his eyes and pretend that nothing’s wrong. Nobody says anything to him, Luke and Michael exchange concerned glances whenever they think Calum can’t see them, and he pretends to be asleep when Ashton draws the curtain to his bunk at an obscene hour at night because he knows what he’ll see when if he opens his eyes. 

* * *

The things is, _the thing is_ that Calum loves Ashton. He loves him in a way he can’t ever imagine loving someone else, in a way that he doesn’t know how to exist without. Calum and Ashton have been CalumandAshton ever since they first laid eyes on each other in Michael’s garage all those years ago, they are something Calum and the band have built their foundation upon. Calum loves Ashton for who he is, has since he was fifteen. He loves him for him and that used to be something that Calum would bet his life on. But for a while now, in the privacy of his hotel room in the middle of the night (when Ashton is out again, with people Calum will never know) or in his bunk in the tour bus, as they travel towards yet another city, Calum wonders if he only ever loved Ashton for who he was in Calum’s head, for the version of the man Calum wanted him to be.

There are a lot of secrets Calum keeps. Small ones, like really knowing how Michael broke his wrist that one summer in seventh grade and big ones that could shatter lives around him. These are all secrets Calum will never say out loud. But this one, this one Calum barely lets himself think of for fear that someone will find out because it will break apart everything around him and he can’t let that happen.

He knows that their relationship isn’t perfect but he knows that their love for each other almost is, and he knows they can survive anything, including this. He knows this, and he keeps holding on, even when the strength of his own grip nearly breaks his fingers.

* * *

_The thing is_ , Calum’s life is fucked up. He plays to thousands of people nearly every night, he once saw someone at a concert faint because he winked at them (and that had been a disaster, Calum so baffled he didn’t know what to do, wordlessly turning to Ashton for help while Luke laughed so hard he nearly hacked up a lung), he’s living the life he’s dreamed of.

So, he tries to deal, he goes running in the morning, trying to ignore how Ashton didn’t make it back to his bunk after the show. He writes songs, filling up journal after journal and handing them off to Luke or Andy or anyone just as long as he doesn’t have to deal with the words and what they mean and how everything is not what he wants it to be and how he doesn’t know how to deal.

Because another thing is, Calum knows Ashton loves him. Knows it the way he knows that the sun will rise in the east, the way he knows how Amnesia begins, the way he knows exactly how his mother’s garden smells in the summer. He knows Ashton loves him and he loves Ashton but if this doesn’t stop, if Ashton doesn’t stop making the stagehand laugh _exactly like that_ or the girl from the opening band look at him with stars in her eyes (and _oh_ , Calum realises, feeling like there is an icy-cold hand squeezing his hand, _he used to look at Ashton like that_ ), if he doesn’t stop climbing into Calum’s bunk smelling like people Calum tries desperately not to imagine, if this doesn’t stop, Calum knows someone is going to end up hurt.

He doesn’t know what to do about the hurt that is already bubbling inside him, how he hates being touched these days, that every time Ashton comes to him already smelling like someone else, he can’t help but think of himself as a failure.

His life is fucked. He just chalks this down to another one of those things in his life that he can’t quite explain but has to live with and tries to move on with his days.

* * *

They’re somewhere in France when Michael softly opens the door at the back of the bus at four in the morning and joins Calum, who’s sitting there smoking in the dark. The show tonight had been fun, but all Calum can think of is how disjointed they’re becoming, how he doesn’t run to the back of the stage to play with Ashton anymore, how he barely moves on stage anymore, just stands in his corner and plays his parts, how Michael and Luke try to compensate for it, try to be loud and noticeable and play around with each other so nobody looks at Calum long enough to question his behaviour, how Ashton still behaves like nothings wrong when he spends hours curled up on the sofa with the singer making her laugh (Jessie, her name is Jessie and Calum is very close to telling management to fire her band even though he knows it’s not her fault).

Michael sits next to Calum silently, taking a cigarette when Calum offers him one, moving in a little closer to light it off of Calum’s. They sit like that for a while, smoking in silence.

“If you want,” Michael says after a while, the sky in front of them slowly turning into the darkest of blues from black as morning approached, “if you want Cal, I’ll kill him.”

Somewhere in him, Calum knows Michael is only half-joking. Because if Ashton is his other half (and imagine, what a broken whole they’d create, Calum and Ashton joined together now, even though they used to work together perfectly), then Michael is an extension of Calum himself, because everything they’ve told each other over the years, everything they’ve been to each other over the years, it had all culminated in this, in a relationship where Calum doesn’t know how he would exist without Michael, where he is going to stand next to him as he gets married, where Michael sits across from him at four in the morning, only half-joking as he looks at Calum and asks if he wants him to kill his boyfriend. And Calum loves him for it.

“He dies and we’re out of a job Mikey.” He says, taking another drag of his cigarette, watching the smoke curl up and rise.

“Nah, people will come to watch us out of the goodness of their heart, because of how bad they feel for us.” Michael shakes his head.

Calum bows his head, looks at his hands. Looks at his fingers, scarred by years of playing without caring when his skin splits open. Wonders if he’ll stop caring when his heart splits open too.

“I just,” he says, takes a deep breath, finally putting to word the thoughts that had been haunting him for months now “I just wanna know where I stopped being enough, when he looked at me and decided he needed more, where I was found lacking.”

Michael’s face changes expression rapidly, his arm reaching out and pulling Calum to him as the younger boy breaks down, dropping his cigarette to the ground, both his hands coming up to clutch Michael’s jacket as he cried. Because Michael knows Calum is strong, stronger than most, knew it when he climbed in through Michael’s bedroom window and told him he was gay, his voice shaky but brave, when he promised Michael’s mother to take care of him on tour, when he told Michael he liked Ashton. Michael knows Calum as well as he knows himself, knows there aren’t any secrets between them.

“You’re enough Cal.” He says, whispering it into his hair, hoping that if he says it enough, Calum would actually believe him. “You’re enough, none of this is your fault, none of it is on you, you’re enough, you’ve always been enough.”

Calum just holds on, because even though he knows Michael can’t fix this for him, no matter how much he wishes he can, he can make it better for a moment.

* * *

Calum knew that 5 Seconds of Summer had always carried with it a certain image. They weren’t like One Direction, who had always been marketed as _boys_ even when they most decidedly weren’t and had carried with them the clean-cut, homegrown, good boys you want to take home to your mother image, until it had blown up in their faces and they had all fallen apart (and Calum knows what their dressing room was like, in the end, how Harry had stopped being subtle with the way he looked at Niall, but Zayn had been so unwilling to let the Irishman go that when he did, it was by leaving in the middle of the night and not calling Niall back until it was too late and Harry had invited him to the wedding, but whether to rub his face into it or to make amends, nobody was sure).

5 Seconds of Summer was always in a way, marketed as real people, boys who had come so far with nothing but the friendship they shared and a deep-seated spirit of perseverance and lack of belief in failure, and they were allowed to fuck up in public, as long as they were redeemable. Their band had had two of them leak nudes in a year and still survive, everybody knew they drank and smoked weed and despite all of that, they were still marketable, they still sold-out arenas and stadiums and were the toast of the town more often than not.

But Calum knew the band wouldn’t survive a cheating scandal between two of their members. Because his and Ashton’s relationship had always been used as a fix, to cover up Luke drinking himself half to death after _her_ , and Michael getting photographed with a new girl every night. Because at the end of the day, no matter what the rest of them did, their PR team had always been able to sell Ashton and Calum as the childhood sweethearts, the soulmates of the group and it had _sold_ well. People loved it, magazines ate it up, called them _inspirational_ and _brave_ and Vogue had called them for two years before they’d agreed to a tour of their house in London.

Calum never thought that the marketing would be all that’s left of them.

* * *

Ashton is the best second-best actor in the band, right after Calum, because Michael doesn’t believe in lying about it when he isn’t alright and Luke is absolute garbage at pretending so it nearly always comes down to Calum and Ashton to keep the band together in times of crisis.

Calum has become so good at acting these days he doesn’t know when he isn’t. Because there are two Ashtons these days, one who holds his hand on the street and calls him his partner as often as he can in interviews, and one who climbs into Calum’s bed after he gets out of someone else’s. Ashton looks at them like he doesn’t see Calum being a shell of himself these days, refuses to acknowledge the wide berth Michael gives him and the way Luke looks at him with betrayal in his eyes. Acts like everything is fine, like they aren’t all cracking apart under the weight of Ashton’s actions. Sometimes Calum thinks this is how the four of them will go out, drowning under the weight of their own silence.

They’re at a party (Calum thinks they might be throwing the party), the crew celebrating the fact that there’s only one more show is left in the European leg of the tour, that they all get to go home for two weeks before they have to come back. Calum is in the balcony of the hotel suite they’re celebrating in, the room too oppressive, too loud for him to stay in anymore, not with Ashton being the life of the party in there, commanding everyone’s attention without even trying. 

The show that night had been awful, their band never more out of sync with each other. Luke had barely been able to play, or hold his mic, had spent the show in the middle of the stage. Everyone seemed relegated to their corners now, the divide slowly becoming literal.

He hears the balcony door open and slide shut with a small _snick_ , the sounds of the party escaping momentarily before being muffled again. He doesn’t bother turning to see who it is, concentrating on the drink in his hand, and trying not to cry, like he usually does these days.

He’s expecting Michael or Luke, who have taken it upon themselves to ensure that Calum isn’t left alone. Or maybe even Andy, who doesn’t say anything but looks at Ashton like he’s a stranger now. He’s expecting everyone except Jessie, who somehow looks too young, without her makeup and it’s with a jolt that Calum remembers she’s only 18, almost as young as they were when they were was an opening act.

“Hey” she says, when it becomes evident Calum isn’t going to say anything.

“What made you think you’re going to be welcome out here?” he asks roughly, taking a swig of his own drink, too tired to be pleasant to anyone, especially the person his boyfriend of ten years had found to be enough where he had found Calum lacking. (Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was sleeping with everyone who would give him a second look because that is how much he had found Calum wanting, that he was trying to tell him to _look. Look. Look at how many people I have to be with so I can finally have what I need._ )

She flinches. The words had come out harsher than Calum had intended them to, but this year had been harsher than Calum expected and he was almost at the end of his rope now.

“No, I just needed to talk to you.” She said quietly.

“See, the thing is, I don’t want to. So why don’t you go inside, where there are drinks and people waiting for you and leave me alone.” He turns around to look at the city again, finishing his drink, waiting to hear her leave.

“I’m sorry Calum, I never meant for this to happen, it’s just that he was _Ashton Irwin_ and I was so homesick and he was right there.” She says in a rush, her age shining through her words and Calum closed his eyes and thought _god, did Ashton really have to ruin everything he touched_ and tries not to see the hickey on her collarbone in the shape of a mouth he knew all too well.

“Yeah, he’s good at doing that.” He says, remembering every single time Ashton had been his home when they were on tour, especially the first time, so good at being there when Calum needed him, so good at being everything he wanted, at making him feel like the only person left in the world. “Go inside Jessie, have some fun.” He says, not unkindly, trying to remember that she was a child compared to him, that this year had aged him more than he thought it ever would. He hears the door open and then close, and finishes his drink in one gulp, resting his head on upon his folded arms on the railing, ignoring the sound of the door opening and closing again.

“What,” Luke said, as he came to stand next to him, “was that about?”

Calum can see, now that he’s closer, why Luke wasn’t able to play that night. His knuckles are split open, some of them still bleeding. He realises why Ashton was wearing makeup on his face, even though it had been barely visible.

Thinks how bad everything has to be if it was Luke who had finally made it physical, Luke, who had looked at Ashton like an older brother, had gone to him for comfort for as long as Calum could remember.

“I’m so tired Luke, I’m so tired.” He mumbled as Luke came to stand next to him, his arm around Calum who leaned into him, and they stood like that for what felt like hours, looking over the city neither of them remembered the name of as the night slowly grew darker and darker, trying to remember what it had felt like when they had been young and full of hope.

It all seemed so long ago now. 

* * *

It’s different in London. Even Ashton doesn’t dare tarnish the sacredness of this city, not when it’s the city where everything began for them, the place they bought a house together in, the house that they were supposed to raise their kids in, once they managed to get away from LA, the house they were supposed to make a home.

It is there that Calum goes, after the show, ignoring everyone who tries to talk to him. He gets into a car, without security for the first time in months, just him and a duffle bag, and tells them where to go. He looks out at the city as they drive, knows somewhere there is Mali and he promised to see her before he left because she couldn’t make it to the show today but he knows he can’t go to her today because she’d know as soon as she saw his face and he wouldn’t be able to hold himself together after that, and he can’t allow himself to fall apart any more than he already has.

He enters the house slowly, dropping his bag by the door. Everything’s been recently cleaned, and he makes a note to thank their manager for calling the staff to clean up before they came. He takes his shoes off, and pads across softly to the kitchen, unable to bring himself to disturb the silence. He gets some bread and cheese and eats right there, over the sink, too tired to bother with plates. Washes it down with half a glass of water, grabs a bottle of whiskey before he takes his bag and goes upstairs and turns the shower on, taking a swig from the bottle before he places it on the sink and gets in the shower.

When he gets out, he remembers to grab the bottle before he remembers a towel, and dresses slowly in sweatpants he’s pretty sure belonged to Michael at some point. He sits on the floor in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the bedroom, the ones that had finally sold him and Ashton on the place. He drinks silently, looking out over the city, leaning tiredly on the glass. He can see the lights of the city in the distance, knows that there are multiple parties happening right now that he’d be welcome in, but he gets the feeling that this is his last time in this house for a long while and he’s determined to enjoy it, to spend one last night in the place where he allowed himself to think of a future that now looks more uncertain than it ever did.

He’s done with most of the bottle before he hears the door downstairs open and close and he sighs. There’s a pleasant buzz in his head, and he knows he’s on the tipping point of being drunk, his capacity considerably higher now than when he had last gotten drunk in this house. He remembered that day, Ashton whispering _this is us, sweetheart, this house is ours, it’s all going to be ours_ , before carrying him upstairs where they had spent hours tiring each other out in bed. He remembered waking up in the morning, the sunlight creeping into the room, looking across the bed at Ashton and thinking, _yes, this is it for me, he’s it for me_ , a feeling of contentment creeping into his chest.

That feeling had been replaced with betrayal and resentment and hurt, so much hurt that somedays Calum can taste it in the back of his throat.

The door of the room opened and shut quietly, and Calum heard familiar footsteps make their way across the room, shuffling to a stop right behind him, and then a hand resting on the back of his neck.

“Hey pup,” Ashton said, the sound of his voice making something in Calum’s chest feel warm, despite everything, despite what he was going to say next, “what are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d spend one last night.” Calum said, not looking up where he knew Ashton was long down at him.

“We’ll be back here before you know it, Cal, you know that.” Ashton said softly, settling into one of the chairs they kept near the window, the absence of the warmth of his hand on Calum’s neck making all the warmth he had suddenly felt go cold again, and all the hurt it had temporarily put at bay came rushing back in.

“No,” he said decidedly, shaking his head, looking up at the window, where he could see Ashton’s reflection, “no we won’t Ashton.”

Ashton’s expression morphed into one of confusion, leaning forward to look at him, as if he really didn’t know what Calum was talking about. “What do you mean Cal?”

“I mean,” and at this Calum closed his eyes, knowing this was the hard part, if he could get through this, he’d be fine, “I mean, how much do you think we’d get for the house Ashton. Whatever we get back, you can keep, I don’t want any of it.”

“Calum,” Ashton said, his voice worried, as if this wasn’t the culmination of a cycle he had started nearly four months ago, that nobody had been brave enough to articulate until now, “what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about us, and how we’re nearly over Ash. You think I don’t see you; you think I don’t know? You think there’s anybody who doesn’t know?” Calum sounds resigned, already knowing how the rest of the night was going to play out.

“Cal, baby, you know there’s nothing, you know I’m all yours.” His hand is on Calum’s bicep now, pulling him to his feet. “When we go back to LA, everything will be alright.”

And Calum is tired. He wants everything to be normal for just a minute, want it all to be _fine_ , wants them to be CalumandAshton again so he lets Ashton lead him to bed, lets him press him down and kiss him, lets him whisper that he loves him that _you’re the only one for me baby, you know there’s never going to be anyone else_ , and lets himself believe for the night that this is true, that Ashton loves him, that this is the same man he fell in love with, the same one who would have done anything Calum asked of him, who would have never looked at Calum and thought _not enough_.

When he wakes up in the morning, he looks across to where Ashton is sleeping and thinks _no,_ and by the time Ashton is awake Calum is already halfway across the Atlantic, an apology texted to Mali and another sent to Michael to let him know where he was. When he lands, he ignores the texts and missed calls from _Ashton Irwin (UK)_ on his phone as he makes his way across town and knocks on the door of the one person (well technically two, but he knows which of them will be useful and which of them will make him food) he knows has been where he was right now.

“Hey lad,” Niall says as he opens the door, “come on in, Michael texted me, we’ve been expecting you.”

* * *

The thing about Niall and Harry is, that it almost didn’t happen. Calum remembers the year they toured with One Direction, how it was always Zayn and Niall, while Harry was always on the outside, looking in, his friendship with Louis dying slowly, always _tiredtiredtired_. He thinks sometimes, that they only agreed to have 5SOS as their opening band so that all of them could avoid the way their dressing room seemed more like a warzone, the band unravelling at the seams.

Calum doesn’t doubt that Zayn had loved Niall. Maybe even loves, if the gossip he hears at parties is to be believed, but he never loved him enough, never more than _mine_. Niall confided in him once, after Zayn left, drunk enough to be spilling secrets, half-asleep on Calum as they cuddled on his couch, _I think he only loved me so nobody else would_.

And Calum sees how Harry looks at Niall, like the older boy was all his dreams come to life, like he would drop everything and follow him across the world if he only asked, holding his hand on the red carpet and talking about how great Niall’s gardening skills were when the interviewer had asked him about his new album, and thinks, _yes, this is how it should be_. Wonders how someone like Niall, who got his heart crushed the first time, looked at someone else and handed them his heart again, trusting they wouldn’t break it.

Because Calum doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to live in a world where he isn’t with Ashton. Doesn’t know how to separate his life from his, how to exist with his life demarcated in a before and after, with Ashton as the defining event. How can he, when the best years of his life have been with him, when every high, every low is inextricably tied to Ashton, when he can’t look at a happy memory without remembering what Ashton was like in that moment. Losing Ashton would be like losing a limb, but if the limb is festering and infected, wouldn’t he rather chop it off than live with something that causes him pain every waking second of his life?

He tries to find a way to articulate all this to Niall, but the man takes one look at him and directs him to one of the bedrooms in his and Harry’s sprawling house with firm instructions to get cleaned up before showing his face again. The place seems never-ending and Calum knows that one of the major reasons they bought it was the privacy it afforded them.

He takes a long warm shower, feeling the effects of last night’s whiskey and the jetlag kick in. He’s been exhausted for months now, Michael pushing bottles of water at him when the dehydration caused his hands to shake visibly, Luke leaving granola bars and apples on every flat surface on the off chance that he would eat. He looks at himself in the mirror as he unwraps a toothbrush, one hand gripping the sink as he brushes. He’s visibly lost weight, his cheeks looking gaunt for the first time in his life, the circles under his eyes looking like bruises. He’s lost almost all the muscle mass he had, and his clothes hang off of him in a way they haven’t since he was a teenager. He dresses in a loose t-shirt and another pair of sweatpants, drags himself down to the kitchen feeling less exhausted than he has in months. Harry greets him there, with a short squeeze around the shoulders and a quick kiss pressed to his forehead, obviously dressed for going out. It was barely noon in LA, despite Calum’s internal clock insisting on it being evening.

Harry handed him a cup of coffee as he opens the fridge, takes off his suit jacket and folds his shirt sleeves. “You okay with pancakes?” he asks.

“What,” Calum said, half-zoned out. “Yeah, yeah of course.” He then realised Harry had looked as if he was about to leave, and couldn’t help but realise how he was probably disrupting the plans both of them had had, and a wave of guilt washed over him. “Harry, if you’ve somewhere to be, it’s alright.” He said, as he awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. For all he’d done since he had opened for them, he always felt much younger around the One Direction boys, mostly because of their insistence on treating the four of them like younger brothers.

Harry dismissed him with an elegant wave of his hand as he whisked ingredients in a bowl. “I’ve missed you Calum, this is the least I can do for you. I heard the new album, one of your best works really.”

“One of?” Calum asked, smiling as he drank his coffee. Even after all these years, praise from one of his idols made him feel like he was seventeen again, blushing every time Harry even looked in his direction.

“Well yeah,” Harry said, a mischievous look in his eyes, “my favourite is always going to be Heartbreak Girl.”

Calum groaned loudly at that, hopping down from the counter to refill his mug. “Harry no.” He said, already knowing what was about to happen as Niall entered the kitchen.

“What are we refusing Harry today then?” he asked, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.

“Niall, love, join me into a duet of the best song ever written by the lad’s band, would you?” Harry said, and the two started a slower rendition of Heartbreak Girl, while Calum groaned and laughed.

It’s the best morning he has had in a while, and he finds himself wishing it never ends.

* * *

The first two days Calum spends in the Horan-Styles household consist almost entirely of him sleeping, eating and watching crap television with Niall, Harry flitting in and out of the house from one appointment to another. He’s in the studio these days, recording his fourth album. 

On the third day, he finally switches his phone on, noting the messages from Luke and Michael that existed mostly along variations of _see you at the airport in a couple of days_ , with a couple of photos of them on vacation (Michael’s seems to be taking place in his back garden) and the one from their manager asking him to put out a tweet about being excited about the next leg of the tour. He quickly tweeted that, noting how the group chat with the four of them had been suspiciously silent for the last few weeks, an extension of how it had been since the beginning of the tour.

Then he turned to Ashton’s texts. He had almost eighty texts from the man, and about twenty missed calls, the final text from this morning which read, _Cal, please let me know where you are baby, I’m so worried_. He snorted at that, turning his phone off again. It would do Ashton some good to stay up at night wondering where he was, Calum had done it for months after all.

He found Niall on the couch as he came to the living room, two mugs of coffee on the table in front of him, still steaming. “Morning sleeping beauty,” he said as Calum entered, “tour sickness finally wearing off?”

“I feel like a new man.” Calum admitted, as he picked up his mug and made to sit down.

“I was thinking we could go out to the backyard. I know you haven’t seen what Harry has done with the porch out back.” Niall said.

“Knowing Harry, probably something horrifying in the name of modern art.” Calum said, as he sipped from his mug as they walked through the house. It was open, glass windows replacing walls in as many places as they could, the place nearly swallowed up by the sunlight, everything painted white and looking fresh. It was the kind of house you lived in with the love of your life, the one you moved into when your future was a certainty.

“He’d surprise you, becoming quite a handyman Harry is.” Niall said, as he opened the backdoor. “See he laid down the wood in the entire place, did the flooring and the painting.” The back porch was quite rustic, more than he had expected after seeing the rest of the house. Plants hung on the walls, rocking chairs and a picnic table with two benches laid out. It looked over what looked like an expansive garden, grass and flowers mixing in, though Calum could see patches of where he knew Niall and Harry had planted vegetables. It was bordered by trees, giving them as much privacy they could want.

“Kind of expected you guys would have an Olympic-sized swimming pool out here.” Calum admitted, sitting down on one of the benches, as Niall sat down opposite him.

“Nah,” Niall said, waving his hand, “that one is inside the house. It’s not Olympic sized though, just enough to take a lap in. I’ll give you a proper house tour at some point.”

Calum suddenly felt the familiar wave of guilt wash over him. “I’m so sorry Niall, I’ve been an awful houseguest, barely been awake enough to-”

Niall cuts him off. “Cal, I remember touring, used to tire me the fuck out mate. I would walk around the house like a zombie for weeks. S’alright, I’m glad you’re here, you know you’re always welcome. Mi casa es su casa and all that.”

Calum nodded, the guilt retreating a bit, but not leaving completely. He had a place here in LA he could have gone to, though there was no doubt in his mind that Ashton was there right now and he wasn’t sure he could’ve survived living under the same roof as him for two weeks. He sipped at his coffee slowly, just glad to be basking in the sun, feeling a little bit like a cat as he stretched his legs.

“How have you been doing Cal?” Niall asked him, gently, as if he knew exactly what the answer was going to be.

“Depends on how much you’ve already heard.” Calum replied, no doubt in his mind that Niall already knew some of what had transpired on tour, and even before. A man like Niall, married to a music icon, a music icon, albeit a retired one, in his own right, there were no doubts in Calum’s mind that few things happened in the industry without Niall being aware of them. He had seen him at parties, half the town eager to whisper in his ear, to tell him something or the other about the other half.

Why, if Niall ever did decide to write that tell-all book, all of them would have to pack-up and leave.

“I know most.” Niall acknowledged with a wry smile, “Crews talk.”

“What,” Calum said, words suddenly difficult to get out, “what am I supposed to do Niall?” he asked, feeling all of seventeen and stumbling into Niall’s room because the crowd outside was loud, _too loud_ , and he couldn’t sleep, and Ashton was busy ensuring that Luke and Michael were alright and he had told him he would be fine, but he just couldn’t _sleep_. Niall had held him as he had cried, tears of mostly frustration at how exhausted he was, because he just wanted to be home, but this was what he had wanted to do his whole life and he couldn’t quit, but he just wanted to sleep.

Niall never told him that Ashton had come in looking for him twenty minutes later, his entire face morphed with worry, only easing when he had caught sight of Calum. Niall had smiled, and gently eased himself out of the bed, Calum barely stirring. He had asked Ashton to get in, had gone down the hall to sleep in Zayn’s room instead, and when he had realised that bed was occupied, in Harry’s. But he remembered the way Ashton had looked when he had held the younger boy, his eyes shining in adoration, looking at him like he had never looked at anything so precious.

He just can’t reconcile that boy with the one he had been hearing about recently, and it almost broke his heart looking at what he had done to Calum.

“Take a break Calum.” He said, as gently as he could, his hand stretching across the table to hold the younger boy’s. “Take a break, take some time away from him and think about what you want. Think about if you can live with this, with him, even after this.”

“I don’t know who I am when I’m not with him.” Calum admitted, on the verge of crying.

“Oh sweetheart,” Niall said, getting up to sit down next to him, “I know you and Ashton have been together way longer than Zayn and I ever were, but I never thought I’d be a person without him either. Had to spend time figuring out who Niall was when he was not with Zayn. If that’s what you decide you want, if that’s who you decide you want to be, then it’ll take time Cal, but you’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Did Zayn ever?” Calum asked, hoping Niall would fill in the rest of the question himself.

“Yeah. Found him with a few groupies while he was in the band, and everyone always told me it was a tour thing, that people aren’t who they are on tour, that it brings out the worst in us. He would start before tour sometimes, would start staying out late, coming home at dawn. It wasn’t like him, not Zayn who used to only want silence and art and tea and music. He started doing it after tour too, and that’s when I knew I had to get out, when I realised there wasn’t much of the boy I thought I had loved left.” Niall over to the other side of the table, letting his ankle brush against Calum’s.

“And Harry?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

A genuine smile crept over Niall’s face at this. “Harry barely even realises there’s anyone in the room apart from us. He’s never; never even looked at anyone, not even when he’s on tour and we haven’t seen each other in weeks and fought the last time we talked. I even told him he could once, think that’s the angriest I’ve ever seen him.”

Calum smiled at this, looking up when Niall started speaking again, “I’m not saying forgive him Calum, god help me I never would. But you and Ashton, you and him aren’t like Zayn and I were. That relationship wasn’t about love, but Ash, he looks at you like you hung the stars.”

“Used to.” Calum says, “He used to look at me like that Niall, now he just looks at me like I’m a thing on a checklist he’s accomplished, get a boyfriend jammed right between go on a world tour and fuck a groupie. I don’t know what’s happened Ni, he isn’t the boy I fell in love with.”

“It all depends on what you want now Cal.” Niall says, smiling a little sadly, the way he did in the last few interviews for One Direction, even when nobody but them knew it was their final hours, “Nothing else matters here, it doesn’t matter what anyone else wants, doesn’t even matter what he wants. It all comes down to you here.”

When Calum looks up at him again, he knows Niall already knows what choice he’s going to make. He can taste the hurt again.

* * *

Asia is a lesson in falling apart.

Calum arrives at LAX the day they have to leave, with Harry driving him. He feels like he’s going off to summer camp. Niall had had a meeting that morning, had left him with a kiss on his cheek and a ‘be good’ muttered in his hair. As they pull up to the entrance, Harry stops the car, pulls him in for a hug. 

“Whatever you do Cal,” Harry says, “Niall and I, we’ll always have a bed made for you.”

Calum pretends he isn’t close to crying, doesn’t let himself stain Harry Styles shirt that probably cost as much as he makes in a year and still somehow manages to look atrocious in a way that nobody but Harry Styles could pull off. “Thanks Harry.” He mutters into his shirt.

Harry helps him unload his luggage, both of them working fast before the paps realise they’re here.

“It’s very possible,” Harry drawls before he pulls away, “that Niall and I will have a baby for you to play with next time you come around.”

Calum smiles so wide he thinks it might break his face in two, rushing inside the airport as the Range Rover pulls away. Sees the paparazzi rounding the corner as he enters, texting a quick _congrats!!_ to Niall.

He hands his luggage over to security and enters the private lounge that’s reserved for just them. Sees Ashton in the corner, his earphones in. Doesn’t allow himself to look at him for longer than a second, instead makes his way to where Luke is half-asleep, using Sierra as a blanket.

“Hey Lukey.” He says as Luke tugs him in, giggles at his youngest bandmate quietly with Sierra, as the two of them make small talk about the tour ahead. She doesn’t ask anything about the man in the corner and he’s suddenly very, very glad for her. He knows Luke and Ashton haven’t been talking, knows it has to do with the bruises he knows Luke left on Ashton. Doesn’t ask anything more than he can already infer.

A lot of their band functions currently rest on not asking.

Calum feels the familiar tour excitement build up inside him as they land in India, knows they have two months and then a break, the break in which Michael gets married, finds himself excited at the prospect of a month-long vacation.

Asia trudges along slower than he thought it would. Most of the crew seemed to have picked sides, few people talking to Ashton anymore. Ashton, who spends most of his time not on stage in his bunk or behind his drumkit. Ashton who seems to have given up on going out, and other people and alcohol.

And Calum doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he doesn’t. Only Michael seems to be talking to Ashton anymore, always with a guilty look thrown in Calum’s direction.

Niall video calls him one day, a blonde-haired angelic-looking baby cradled in his arms.

“We’re calling her Rose. Rose Calum Styles-Horan.” Harry tells him excitedly, trying not to wake the baby up.

“Guys.” Calum says, his eyes welling with tears, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll agree to be her godfather.” Niall asks.

“Yes, yes of course.” He nods so hard he’s worried he pulled something. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Cal, you’ve been like a brother for us, you were a rock for Niall for so long.” Harry says, his eyes kind. “You’re part of the family.”

“Who’s the other godparent?” Calum asks.

“Well, Stevie Nicks.” Harry says, watching as Calum’s eyes widen and Niall lets out a snort of laughter, the baby in his arms stirring. “No, no just kidding, we’ve already asked Taylor.”

“Well good, she needs some sanity in her life.” Calum says, wiping away at his tears. “Thanks guys.”

It’s that call that gives Calum the last push he needs. He talks to Harry and Niall for a while, mostly cooing over the baby. Steels himself when the call is over, and walks over to Ashton’s room.

“We need to talk.” He says.

They sit on the terrace for a while. Calum discovered early-on in touring that the terrace was almost always easily accessed, almost always empty, and always a good place for a smoke. So, he lights up a cigarette. Asks Ashton why.

Ashton tells him he got overwhelmed and scared, that he realised it was just going to be the two of them for the rest of his life. That it freaked him out. That he acted out and Calum could almost laugh, because this is the great big reason, this is why Ashton took ten years and set them ablaze. Every word he speaks, all Calum hears is half a year of _not enough not enough_ being thrown at him. And he tells him that. Tells him how he made him feel, how Ashton made all his nightmares about being inadequate come true. How it _hurthurthurt_ , how Calum woke up somedays, choking on it. That Ashton got scared and broke his heart for it.

Somewhere deep inside him, Calum thinks he should have seen it coming.

Ashton looks at him as he gets up to leave. “Cal,” he says, “I love you.”

And Calum can hear the truth in his words. Can feel how badly he wants to go back, run into Ashton’s arms, make everything right again.

Calum almost resents himself as he feels the tears fill his eyes. He wants everything to be as it was, wants to look at Ashton and not see the mistakes he made. Maybe someday he’ll be able to, but not today. _Not today._

“I love you too,” he says, “but that’s not enough. Not for now.” Ducks into the stairwell before he starts crying, almost before he hears Ashton cut-off sob behind him.

Think he’ll survive this too.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written in this fandom before, I've never written a fic I'm remotely proud of before. Mostly inspired by [takotosubo cardiomyopathy by apeirophobia](https://archiveofourown.org/series/331720)
> 
> I've done nothing but write this for a week, I've never edited anything so heavily. I know it might still be shit. Everything is falling apart for me in quarantine, and I mostly wrote this as a coping mechanism to put off choices I'd rather not make. I've to go make them now I guess. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think.


End file.
